Russian scientists have uncovered the remains of a 50,000-year-old baby mammoth found in thawing permafrost in the remote Yakutia region of Siberia during the summer.
“Yana” – which is named after the river basin where it was discovered – is said to be the best-preserved mammoth carcass in the world.
Weighing over 100kg (15st 10lb) and measuring 120cm (4ft) tall and 200cm long, Jana is thought to have been only about a year old when she died.
Before this find, only six such discoveries were made in the world – five in Russia and one in Canada.
Yana was discovered in the Batagayka Crater, the world's largest permafrost crater (land that is permanently frozen), by people living nearby.
Residents “were in the right place at the right time,” said Lazarev, head of the Mammoth Museum Laboratory.
“They saw that the mammoth had thawed almost completely” and decided to make a makeshift stretcher to bring the mammoth to the surface, Maxim Cherpasov said.
“As a rule, the part that thaws first, especially the trunk, is often eaten by modern predators or birds,” he told Reuters.
But “although the forelimbs had already been eaten, the head was remarkably well preserved,” he added.
Gavril Novgorodov, a researcher at the museum, told Reuters that the mammoth was “probably trapped” in a swamp and “thus preserved for several tens of thousands of years”.
Yana studies at the North-Eastern Federal University in the capital of the region, Yakutsk.
Scientists are now running tests to confirm when it died.
This is not the only prehistoric find discovered in Russia's vast permafrost in recent years – as long-frozen land begins to thaw due to climate change.
Just last month, scientists in the same region showed the remains of partially mummified body of a saber-toothed catit is believed to be just under 32,000 years old.
And earlier this year, the remains of a 44,000-year-old wolf were also discovered.